All This and More
–Mary Karr

The Devil’s tour of hell did not include

a factory line where molten lead

spilled into mouths held wide,

no electric drill spiraling screws

into hands and feet, nor giant pliers

to lower you into simmering vats.

Instead, a circle of light

opened on your stuffed armchair,

whose chintz orchids did not boil and change,

and the Devil adjusted

your new spiked antennae

almost delicately, with claws curled

and lacquered black, before he spread

his leather wings to leap

into the acid-green sky.

So your head became a tv hull,

a gargoyle mirror. Your doppelganger

sloppy at the mouth

and swollen at the joints

enacted your days in sinuous

slow motion, your lines delivered

with a mocking sneer. Sometimes

the frame froze, reversed, began

again: the red eyes of a friend

you cursed, your girl child cowered

behind the drapes, parents alive again

and puzzled by this new form. That’s why

you clawed your way back to this life.